Report on the Establishment of the Consortium for Hospital Ethics Committees in Japan and the First Collaboration Conference of Hospital Ethics Committees

Kei Takeshita; Noriko Nagao; Hiroyuki Kaneda; Yasuhiko Miura; Takanobu Kinjo; Yoshiyuki Takimoto

doi:10.1007/s41649-022-00219-0

Report on the Establishment of the Consortium for Hospital Ethics Committees in Japan and the First Collaboration Conference of Hospital Ethics Committees

Asian Bioeth Rev. 2022 Sep 6;14(4):307-316. doi: 10.1007/s41649-022-00219-0. eCollection 2022 Oct.

Authors

Kei Takeshita¹, Noriko Nagao², Hiroyuki Kaneda³, Yasuhiko Miura⁴, Takanobu Kinjo⁵, Yoshiyuki Takimoto⁶

Affiliations

¹ Tokai University Hospital, Isehara City, Kanagawa Japan.
² Kitasato University Hospital, Sagamihara City, Kanagawa Japan.
³ Kansai Medical University Medical Center, Moriguchi City, Osaka Japan.
⁴ The Jikei University Kashiwa Hospital, Kashiwa City, Chiba Japan.
⁵ Ryukyu University Hospital, Nakagusuku County, Okinawa, Japan.
⁶ The University of Tokyo Hospital, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan.

Abstract

Hospital ethics committees (HECs) are expected to play extremely broad and pivotal roles such as case consultation, education of staffs on healthcare ethics, and institutional policy formation. Despite the growing importance of HECs, there are no standards for setup and operation of HECs, and composition and activities of HECs at each institution are rarely disclosed in Japan. In addition, there is also a lack of information sharing and collaboration among HECs. Therefore, the authors established the Consortium of Hospital Ethics Committees (CHEC) in October 2020, which has been regularly hosting a couple of core activities. One is the Healthcare Ethics Forum, held monthly online for CHEC members to freely discuss HECs and healthcare ethics consultation. The other is the Collaboration Conference of Hospital Ethics Committees, intended to provide a place for HEC members and administrative officers from across Japan to exchange information of their HECs, learn from each other, and cooperate to operate HECs appropriately. In this paper, the authors introduced CHEC as well as reported the results of a questionnaire survey conducted at the first conference among participating facilities, suggesting the diverse structures and activities of HECs in Japan.

Keywords: Clinical ethics; Collaboration Conference of Hospital Ethics Committees; Consortium of Hospital Ethics Committees in Japan; Healthcare Ethics Forum; Healthcare ethics consultation; Hospital ethics committee.